Audrey goes psycho and we like it

A regular wrap-up of this week’s “24,” a Fox series in which CTU (Counter Terrorist Unit) agent Jack Bauer runs frantically from place to place, talking on the cell phone, gunning down bad guys and never running out of either bullets or cell battery time. The feature is named for Jack’s trademark interrogation technique, when he grabs someone, gets in his or her face and yells, “Tell me where the (bomb/nerve gas/other terrorist/my daughter) is!”

Here’s this week’s review of the action:

TV.com

Oh sure, she looks harmless enough here.

When last we saw Audrey Raines she was leaking blood like the Exxon Valdez and only had three minutes to live. Lucky Jack Bauer was there with his CTU tourniquet kit. He had the blood stopped in nothing flat and Audrey was quickly so much better that she told him to leave her and chase evil Henderson and the tape that implicates President Logan in the plot that killed ex-president Palmer.

Jack was skeptical about leaving her alone, of course, but this is too important to be emotional. Still before he walked away he said those four little words that mean so much: “Keep your arm elevated.”

Meanwhile, Chloe O’Brian has escaped from smarmy Miles Papazian at CTU and has landed at Bill Buchanan’s house. She is quickly in touch with Jack who tells her she has to hack into the CTU system on Bill’s computer. Get into the top-secret network from a home computer, geez, how would she do something like that?

“I can slip in through the subnet,” Chloe says.

Exactly.

Finding Henderson proves to be no problem, and capturing him was even easier when he spotted Jack and blew through all the bullets in his gun in about 37 seconds. Audrey, who has made a remarkable recovery, and Jack have him now.

But wait, Henderson doesn’t have the tape implicating the president in the death of ex-president Palmer. Instead, he’s handed it off and has a helicopter shadowing Audrey’s father, Secretary Heller. If they don’t hear from him, Henderson says, they kill him. This is remarkably fortunate planning by Henderson to know that they’d need a Heller-copter, but that’s why this ruthless madman must be stopped.

Jack calls Heller, who has apparently not thought it strange that a chopper was hovering over him all this time, and explains the deal. Heller says not to let Henderson go, but Jack says they have to.

“Tell Audrey I love her,” Heller says and drives off a cliff and into a large body of water. Pretty gutsy by Heller, although if the car is a rental and he didn’t take the deductible that’s gonna cost somebody.

Jack immediately calls Chloe to ask if she can confirm that “Heller just drove his car into a lake?” How did Jack know it was a lake, since he only talked to the secretary on the phone? Because Jack has memorized the location of every body of water in North America and parts of Afghanistan. It’s standard CTU training.

Looking back at it, yelling “Heller drove his car into a lake,” in front of Audrey, Heller’s daughter, was probably not the most sensitive move. Audrey does a total Sybil, revealing one of her other personalities — the bloodthirsty revenge-of-the-Amazons one.

But Jack only clobbers Henderson with his gun instead and goes back to making sure Chloe is on the CTU computer long enough to be traced and located by smarmy Miles. Soon she is. Who knew Miles would access the machine-coded matrix?

Fox

But see, there’s an explanation.

Back at the western White House, President Logan is once again making his gasping fish face and getting bad news on the phone. He’s got to deal with his loony wife, Martha, who is proving to be remarkably perceptive for someone so hysterical all the time.

President Logan speaks with a Ed Harris-lookalike with a Vulcan phone ear piece who orders him to take care Martha. The president tells his wife he was involved in former president Palmer’s death, but “it is very complicated. There’s an explanation.”

“I hate you,” Martha replies.

So that went well.

But Martha agrees to stay quiet and sets about doing so by knocking back a little cabernet. So I think she’s fine. What could possibly go wrong?

This leaves Jack to rush to the airport and attempt to find a way to get on the diplomatic airplane that is transporting the person with the audio tape to parts unknown.

It looks impossible but Jack remembers that security forces always check under the fuel truck but never on top, so he rides in that way. Then he raises his hood of invisibility, grabs two suitcases, and runs up the cargo beltway and into the plane. No one suspects a thing, which is a handy reminder if you ever miss your flight. A hoodie, a couple of suitcases, and you are good to go.

Now he’s hidden on the plane and it will be certain death if he is discovered. We can only pray that he’s set that cell phone to “vibrate.”